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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Broke, white, Hebrew guy with Asperger's living in Arizona, I was for the Democrats my whole life, though there have been one or two hiccups on certain issues that I've since been educated on. I don't think I've ever actually personally met anyone who was Alt-Right, at least, it wasn't ever mentioned if I did.
I would have been apolitical, perhaps libertarian leaning, if Bernie Sanders hadn't run. He turned me towards politics. What I think really shunted me towards the left is when he talked about 'medicare-for-all'. I had a European parent and they had talked about the healthcare system in their country before. Even if some may consider it unrealistic, achieving it is one of my main goals and what led me to becoming a solid democrat, which in turn made me aware of other issues.
I might have gotten drawn into the alt-right though, because while politics disinterested me I made an effort to pay attention, and while most of the candidates on both sides were boring, Donald Trump was extremely...unusual and I could have seen myself drawn into it just "as a joke".
@Madskillz: When you're referring to large swathes of the country as a "mistake" simply because you don't like the political situation then yes, you are kind of being bigoted. You may say you're only railing against conservatives, but you are pretty consistently painting entire parts of the population as evil even if you don't mean to. It's getting annoying and pretty not constructive.
Also, I've had to remind people I'm a woman a bizarre amount of times in this forum. Although not recently.
Also also, about the being black thing: Uh... sorry to disappoint you guys but there are a few black dudes in the MRA movement. I don't really understand it, but I guess the double think is strong with them. There's apparently also Jews still working at Breitbart. *shrug*
Andrew Breitbart himself was Jewish. It's not that uncommon — neoconservatism pretty much owes its existence to Jewish liberals who turned hard right when they realized Democrats weren't all going to support Israel unconditionally.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I'm a white heterosexual cis-male virgin in my late 20s with no job and living with my mother. Prime material for and MRA alt-righter. And yet I was never drawn to rightwing politics, racism or sexism.
I grew up with Albanian Muslim and Tibetan Bhuddist neighbors, went to school with people from 10 different countries and 5 different religions. I knew "others" as people before I knew what racism even was. Furthermore, I've always had an almost OCD like obsession with fairness and equality. As such I sympathized with communism in my mid-teens. Then, in university I took Gender Studies. Not that I don't have my unconscious biases but deliberately supporting alt-right ideas was never on the table.
See while I'm a strait white man I also had a petty liberal upbringing even before I (at age 10) started attending a boarding school that could best be described as an internationalist-anarchy-commune. That and my religious upbringing involved sermons about the evils of income inequality.
edited 2nd Apr '17 11:14:40 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI have to disagree, you describe a sociological and structural view of racism, but not racism in itself, the utterance of cracker is racism, the fact that the white man has the government's ear more often on average gives his utterance of nigger more power, true, but doesn't deny the racism of saying cracker at all. Yes, I agree that the black man has it worse, but that's an accident of history, redifining racism to only be structural gives cover to assholes who exploit the systems we use to try and remedy racism to get themselves off the hook for their beliefs. EXEMPLI GRATIA: The social justice aligned anti-semites..
edited 2nd Apr '17 11:16:10 AM by vandro
The fact that the racism people are usually discussing is the institutionalized sort kind of makes it hard to discuss simple personal anecdotes where you're just discussing personal interactions rather than the broader social problem.
Plus there is the fact that some people are trying to define racism as Prejudice plus Power rather than using the term Institutionalized Racism and accepting that racism can be used a bit more broadly than they would like.
edited 2nd Apr '17 11:20:54 AM by AceofSpades
I'm half Hebrew on the correct side (maternal) so the alt-right are not welcome. Outside of racism and sexism (I do get casually racist and sexist thoughts and my eyes wander constantly around pretty women, so I can't say I'm devoid of those things) I might align with them somewhat. But, really, what do they even think about that ISN'T racist or sexist 100% of the time?
I used to hide from being Hebrew. I'm not practicing, so I don't call myself Jewish. That being said, I've never held the impractical view that someone's race or sex should bar them from society. That's criminally stupid. The worst notions I might accept are "(insert minority here) isn't for me, personally, but I'll be civil and professional around them."
The thing about the power+prejudice argument is that there's a hidden dog whistle to it, the idea that minorities have no power in any context at all. The entire idea ignores the fact that local power exists, be it in he form of a union president banning white people from a meeting or a group fo musicians asulting a white musician people they feel that white people should never be allowed into that area of music.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyranas student of political science one of the first thing they told me is that power manifest in pretty diffrent way and is not a uniform thing, a poor white will not feel the same as middle class one even when both are in th system, the fact a hundred of people who vote trump are going to be screw is a testament of that.
and let face it, most of the the whole "racism is prejudice+power" become just a way to said who is accetable target and who isn, to many people in social justice tend to be outright pricks if the other person dosent inspare sympaty.
both anyway, Im latino, from venezuela or like I call it, the lefty hellhole(which after reading a lot of bullshit about the extreme left make me understand the US have not idea of what lefty ideas are) im cis and stright but the real reason I dislike the alt right is not just their blatant racism but their unhinged personality, their EXTREME arrogant personality they display and their stupidity.
Also I agree with that cracked article, I was because I read the racism thread that I get a understanding of racism and how it work because otherwise I would grew to hate SJW(well I kinda do but for diferent reasons)
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Bicurious, polygamous white male, decended from a holocaust survivor jewish grandpa who's own dad ended up betting together with a Nazi woman (yeah, he was bitter about that...) who unfortunately had a hatred for all axis power people, including the japanese, and a canadian tomboy grandma who, in my mom's words, was so far ahead of the feminist movement its not even funny..
I didn't grow up with my grandpa's hatred or anger because I was always interested in foreign things (especially japanese).
I'm a hardcore liberal by default, but thanks to the likes of admiring comedians like George Carlin, I'll be more then willing to call out the bullshit and stupidity on the far sides of both parties.
edited 2nd Apr '17 11:46:54 AM by Demongodofchaos2
Watch SymphogearI have a Soviet trained Godfather, I've always sided with the left on economic grounds, generally going more leftward socially as I grew older. Nowdays I consider myself a social democrat.
Although to be honest, I find myself sympathethic to the alt-right's concerns, not because of their goals, which are deplorable, but because I sympathise with their existential dread. Dangerous as they are, I pity them. I truly do.
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I kinda pity them in way, which annoy more is a sociaty who spolied them so much and them refuse o acknowlage their flaws.
In fact the alt right look like the typical narrative of toxic masculanity: they told they are entitled to everything but them left them to their on luck the moment he was supose to stand on their on.
a shame.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Straight white middle class male most of my life, coming to terms with being genderfluid and about a Kinsey 2 within the last couple years as I found out that, y'know, those things existed. Came from a liberal household in a conservative area. I was raised atheist, but was in the Boy Scouts until I aged out at 18, for example. Parents were both politically engaged, but I didn't start becoming politically aware until the Bush years, and particularly until the Iraq War. My big "this shit matters" moment was sitting in my Sophomore English classroom before the day started, and the TV was on to the news when they announced we'd invaded Iraq. The idea that my country had invaded another one blew my mind (which, of course, became much less unfathomable as I actually started paying attention to and thinking critically about our history).
I could see my past self, particularly teenage me, falling to the alt-right by way of the MRA/PUAs had they existed back then. I had some pretty backwards views on sex and gender politics when I was younger, with being deep into anime in the early to mid-2000s not doing me any favors. As it turned out, the best thing to happen to me in that regard was getting in some trouble and having to go to counseling for a while, which taught me a lot about myself and how I viewed/treated women.
I've also come to terms in the last few years that I'm prejudiced against black and to a lesser extent Latino men, and tend to feel intimidated by/mistrustful of them when interacting in person, or at least moreso than I would an otherwise identical white man. The area I grew up in (and for that matter, all the areas I've lived in my whole life) was pretty homogeneously white, so pair having no personal counterexamples with negative media portrayals for that dose of ingrained racism. I make peace with it by trying to remain aware of that prejudice and the effect it has on my thought processes, since all that denying it would do is give it free reign over my decision making.
edited 2nd Apr '17 12:47:01 PM by Wryte
As a white male raised upper-middle-class, I am quite aware of white privilege - and especially white upper-middle-class socialism. A black person who got the kind of welfare aid that I get would be labeled "welfare queen!" so hard his head would spin.
In other news, Judge informs Trump that the First Amendment does not protect speech that directly incites violence, and the lawsuit can go forward.
Not that Trump or his supporters will learn from this.
I'm a straight white male with autism.
I was kind of an army brat growing up in fairly religious household. I think spending time near the military might have made me a patriot. I think Trek might have (quite ironically) helped, too, since I admired that the characters were more or less patriots serving their nation in a paramilitary function. Space Travel was also something I was and continue to be very interested in.
I'm unsure of how I became a staunch capitalist. I think a fantasy for me growing up as inventing something people want and becoming an Uncle Penny Bags as a result.
I dislike the Alt-Right and the Trump administration for various reasons. In the case of the latter, I consider his tolerance of Putin disturbing and his refugee policy to be in violation of the divine commandment to be kind to the foreigner passing through one's lands.
Leviticus 19:34I must add that the US has a painfully strict definition of what being white is.
By (most) European and Latin American standards I qualify as a white but in the US? Arguably, so much this causes some confusion with the North Americans I interacted with in Baltimore.
Politically I must say I had the dubious badge of honor for being bashed by both left and right wingers in my country for being socially liberal and economically leaning center-right.
edited 2nd Apr '17 1:12:54 PM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent leges

Middle class white guy here. I'm not proud of it but if Trump had run for president eight years ago I probably would have supported him. I changed a lot in high school.